Outside of military aircraft drone related deaths are extremely rare. Skulls can survive fairly heavy impacts relative to most drones. Randomly falling drones are also unlikely to hit someone outside the most densely packed crowds.

So, while drunk droning may be a safety hazard, it’s vastly less risky than drunk driving.

>Randomly falling drones are also unlikely to hit someone outside the most densely packed crowds.

Like those found in many Japanese cities?

Japanese drones are already banned in areas with over 4,000 people per km^2.

And it’s already outlawed over cities in Japan.

I'd see them as a cause of traffic accidents/injuries by distraction.

Just as being drunk in public is already a finable offence I think, as is causing disagreements on the public space.

Yes, they're rare because you're not sampling over the set of people operating them while drunk.

That’s likely to underestimate risks as there does not seem to be any deaths related to drunk drone operators.

With how many drones have been sold worldwide, if drones where even vaguely as dangerous as cars per hour we could easily find hundreds of deaths. So, even hypothetically cars are at minimum hundreds of times more dangerous.

I know Japanese cars tend to be smaller than the monstrosities common in the US, but even a small car will weigh >1000lbs. That's enough kinetic energy that even someone in another car is at risk, whereas anyone in a car is nearly invulnerable to a consumer drone. I definitely don't want to be struck by a drone, but given the choice between a car accident and drone accident, I'll take the drone any day.

Wait are we comparing drone on car impacts now?

Quite a few drunk driving deaths are car-on-car, so it seemed a reasonable comparison to make. Although I would suspect the majority of drone accidents are drone-on-human, but even in that case car-on-pedestrian is far more lethal.

A collision between a drone and a windshield is plenty to cause a serious accident.